CFP: Representing the Renaissance in Modern Popular Culture (9/15/06; SAA, 4/5/07-4/7/07)

Research Seminar: Representing the Renaissance in Modern Popular CultureShakespeare Association of America, San Diego, CA, April 5-7, 2007

Call for Papers:

Given the proliferation of work on Shakespeare and popular culture in =20=

recent years, we might be surprised to discover that relatively =20little work has been done either on popular engagements of the =20Renaissance=97as an imagined historical period, culture, or concept=97or ==20popular adaptations of non-Shakespearean Renaissance texts. Rather =20than focusing on how particular literary texts or characters (Hamlet =20or Hamlet) are engaged in popular culture, this seminar will =20encourage participants to think about how the very concept of =20"Renaissance" is adapted, appropriated, perpetuated, or transformed =20by modern popular cultural texts of various kinds.

How is sixteenth-century London depicted, for instance, in works as =20different as Shekhar Kapur=92s Elizabeth, John Madden=92s Shakespeare in ==20Love, or the BBC Rowan Atkinson vehicle, Black Adder, and what does a =20=

specific genre or form of media have to do with it? How are largely =20period-specific concepts such as =93Reformation=94 or =93humanism=94 =20communicated visually or even musically to modern audiences? In what =20=

ways have popular adaptations of Shakespeare=92s plays=97say, =20Zefferelli=92s comedies or Welles=92 tragedies=97served to inform or =infect =20wider popular ideas about what the Renaissance was actually like? =20And how have these popular notions about the Renaissance, in turn, =20affected, limited, or enabled our teaching, and our students=92 =20learning, about early modern literature and/or history? Studies are =20invited that address questions such as these, as well as others that =20consider how =93Renaissance=94 is taken up by film, television, pop =20music, advertising, popular literature, and the popular visual arts.

Seminar Leader: Greg Col=F3n Semenza, University of ConnecticutFormat: Registrants in SAA research seminars are expected to completesignificant work in advance of the meeting: research papers, commonreadings, and bibliographic compilation. Seminars are appropriate forcollege and university faculty, independent scholars, and graduatestudents in the later stages of their doctoral work.